Reader: The Denver cops have gay bars in their sights

Last Friday night, the Denver Police Department did an undercover operation, sending underage police cadets to liquor establishments across Denver where they tried to buy booze. And succeeded in the case of four bars (and numerous liquor stores), all of which were cited for selling to a minor.

Two of the four are gay bars, which made some readers suspicious. Says peegee303:

Out of 28 bars that were checked (and 25 liquor stores), three were gay bars. That's 10.7% of the bars they checked. Denver has over 1200 bars with about 40 gay bars. That means that gay bars make up about 3.3% of the amount of bars in Denver. I don't presume to know why DPD chooses the bars they do for enforcement, but it's clear that the numbers indicate a disproportionate share of gay bars in their sights.

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Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword in 1977; she’s been the editor ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly CPT12 roundtable Colorado Inside Out, played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City, once interviewed President Bill Clinton while wearing flip-flops, and has been honored with numerous national awards for her columns and feature-writing.